So spoke Jarl, and spoke bravely. But his speech was badly slurred, for pain, altitude, fatigue, fear and a wizard's whirlwind battery had told heavily on his resources.
'If Jarl's so sick he needs a nursemaid,' said Rolf Thelemite, his own fatigue displaying itself in his singularly ungracious manner, 'then I suppose I can sponge him down.'
'And Guest will wash himself,' said Sken-Pitilkin in tones of warning, as the Weaponmaster advanced upon Ontario Nol's big stone table.
'Will I?' said Guest, rebelliously. 'I don't think I will, you know. I'm not due for a bath for two or three years at least, and I'm not going to delay dinner for any such eccentricity.' Sken-Pitilkin did not see how Guest could possibly be ready to eat again after having been so prodigiously sick earlier in the day. But the boy was as good as his word. He sat himself down at the dinner table – half-digested eyes and all – and was two-thirds of the way through a second helping of everything by the time his companions returned from their washing.
For dinner they had lentil soup, boiled potatoes and the eggs of several chickens, with a serving of roast soy beans on the side. Ontario Nol apologized for the sparceness of his table.
'Unfortunately,' said Nol, 'we have only the eggs of a chicken, and not the meat. I would have killed you a chicken, only I have none at Qonsajara. The eggs are paid to me in way of tribute by one of the villages further down the valley.'
'You are a ruler, then,' said Guest Gulkan.
'The absolute monarch of all I survey,' acknowledged Ontario Nol. 'I estimate the population of my kingdom as some three thousand people in all. It is sufficient.'
'Your kingdom,' said Guest, chewing against the resistance of some soy beans as he spoke. 'How do you name your kingdom?'
'It is named Qonsajara,' said Ontario Nol, 'taking its name from this monastery, which once was consecrated to the rites of Zozo Darjidan, the tantric strain of Qa Marika. Do you know what is meant by tantrism?'
'Dorking,' said Guest, remembering certain lessons in ethnology. 'That's what it means. The tantric arts are the arts of dorking. Lotham and yargam, sagit and mok. That's what the pictures are all about.'
'True,' said Ontario Nol with a thin smile. 'But there was more to it than that. The tantric rites have catharsis as their goal. One frees the spirit of the flesh by purging the flesh through excess. There is more to it, then, than… how did you put it?'
'Dorking,' said Guest again, unabashed and unashamed.
'One hopes,' said the witch Zelafona, 'that the boy has not offended your religion. If he has, then my dwarf will be happy to beat him for you.'
At that, Glambrax jumped onto the table and struck a beating pose. Guest Gulkan's hand went to his sword.
'Peace,' said Ontario Nol, as Sken-Pitilkin swept Glambrax from the table with his country crook. 'I own to no religion.
Though I name myself as abbot of this monastery, that is just for form's sake. In truth, this temple's rites are a thousand years dead, and the worshippers died with the rites.'
By now, Ontario Nol had the full attention of all his auditors, and they listened in after-dinner leisure as he told what he knew of Zozo Darjidan and the religion of Qa Marika. He lacked the full story, but still knew the most amazing fragments of the much-dislocated history of times long past. He mentioned the Technic Renaissance and the Genetic Mutiny, and told strange stories of a planet named Olo Malan, which – depending on which tradition one adhered to – either was or was not the very ball of dirt on which they were presently standing.
Then Sken-Pitilkin had stories of his own to tell, and
Pelagius Zozimus followed him, after which the dralkosh Zelafona was persuaded to speak.
Never before had Guest heard Zelafona tell of the past. The boy listened, fascinated, as the old woman's shriveled voice spun tales of full-fleshed maidens and desiring heroes, of creatures which lived in mountains and fed themselves on time, of cities of singing glass and streets of liquid fire, of incubus and succubus knotted together in shadows of turbulent desire, of vampires in their cavern-realms, and of ghostly dragons hunting ghosts through realms of living men.
That night, when Guest Gulkan finally got to sleep, he dreamt dreams of hallucinatory vividness. He dreamt of spheres of light which sang and spoke; of armies collapsing in maggot-plague and blood-drench deliquescence; of snoring mountains and sneezing skeletons; of kings dressed in the dazzle of hammered rainbow; of the Dawn Songs of Kalatanastral and the battlements of Stronghold Handfast; of books which conjured cities, and cities which conjured gods. Guest woke in the night with a pounding headache. Such was his pain that he woke Sken- Pitilkin, fearing himself on the verge of death. Sken-Pitilkin told him to go back to sleep, but by then Ontario Nol had already been disturbed.
'It is the height,' said Nol. 'It is the suddenness of the height which causes the headache. Men can damage themselves to the point of death simply by walking to the heights too quickly, and you – you've flown! I should have thought of that. We should check your companions.'
Then, on Ontario Nol's instructions, all the air adventurers were roused from sleep, saving Rolf Thelemite alone, who proved quite impossible to wake.
'He's sleeping solidly,' said Guest.
'There's more to it than that,' said Ontario Nol. 'He's unconscious. His brain has swollen in the high thin air.'
'His brain!' said Guest.
'It is true,' said Nol. Guest Gulkan took some persuading, claiming indeed that he doubted his comrade Rolf to be in possession of any organ so delicate as a brain. But Nol disputed Guest's pretensions to anatomical wisdom, insisting that even warriors of Rovac had brains, although admittedly it was hard to find one who could demonstrate the proper use of such an asset. Then the wizard of Itch detailed the ways in which height itself could kill, concluding by saying:
'So. To safeguard your friend's health, we must take him lower down the valley.'
'Well,' said Guest, 'doubtless when dawn comes – '
'No,' said Nol. 'Not at dawn. Now. We must take him lower, and now, otherwise he dies.'
'Can't we wait until morning?' said Guest.
'By morning,' said Nol, 'one of the minor demons of the Lesser Pit of Idleness will be using your friend's head as a footstool. I counsel you not to delay – not unless you have mastered the fine art of the resurrection of the dead.'
Urged thus by Ontario Nol, the air adventurers dressed themselves in coats provided by their host, heavy coats of wool, coats thick with the smell of generations of woodsmoke. Then they ventured into the night, the cold of which had sharpened to a razor.
There was no moon, but there were stars, clipped chips of needle-prick brightness. Under those stars they began their descent, rock and stone scraping and sliding underfoot as they ventured through the brittleness of the frozen night.
Soon, they were sweating in their heavy coats, sweating despite the cold, for they were carrying the unconscious Rolf Thelemite on a litter, and Rolf proved a brutal burden – even though Nol had roused out a couple of servants to help with the labor, and even though he added his own muscle to the carrying.
To Guest, the stumblestone nightpath through unfamiliar territory seemed an ideal place for an ambush. If Nol planned murder, then maybe ambushers were waiting to take them on a ravinous section of the path, waiting to smash them with landsliding stones or snatch them from the night with garrotes.
For once, Guest Gulkan wanted the counsel of Thodric Jarl, so when the group was resting he shared his thoughts with the Rovac warrior, and found Jarl had similar suspicions. The two of them then returned to the circle of lamplight where Ontario Nol sat cleaning his fingernails, and they challenged that wizard of Itch, who heard out their fears.
'Well, my man,' said Ontario Nol, addressing himself to Thodric Jarl in the Eparget tongue. 'You have a headache, do you not?'
'As if kicked by a horse,' said Jarl, speaking the Eparget with the idiomatic fluency of a very Yarglat barbarian.
'Next question,' said Ontario Nol. 'Can you walk like this?'
With that, the wizard of Itch got to his feet and demonstrated. He demonstrated with great deliberation, like a
